Archive for the ‘Healthcare Benchmarks’ Category

As integrated care management takes hold, patients are much more likely to interact with a case manager at their healthcare provider’s office today than they were four years ago, say respondents to the 2017 Case Management Survey by the Healthcare Intelligence Network. The embedding or colocating of case managers within points of care rose from 54 percent in 2013 to 66 percent this year, the survey found.

A new infographic by HIN examines the top case manager-patient interactions, case management monthly caseloads, details on return on investment for case management programs and more case management trends.

At the point of care or behind the scenes, care coordination by healthcare case managers helps to elevate clinical, quality and financial outcomes in population health management and chronic care, the all-important hallmarks of value-based care.

2017 Healthcare Benchmarks: Case Management provides actionable information from 78 healthcare organizations on the role of case management in the healthcare continuum, from targeted populations and conditions to the advantages and challenges of embedded case management to CM hiring and evaluation standards. Assessment of case management ROI and impact on key care components are also provided.

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Healthcare organizations may have been wary back in 2011, when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) first introduced the accountable care organization (ACO) model. The HHS viewed the ACO framework as a tool to contain skyrocketing healthcare costs.

Fast-forward six years, and most resistance to ACOs appears to have dissipated. According to 2017 ACO metrics from the Healthcare Intelligence Network (HIN), ACO adoption more than doubled from 2013 to 2017, with the number of healthcare organizations participating in ACOs rising from 34 to 71 percent.

And in the spirit of delivering patient-centered, value-based care, ACOs have embraced a whole-person approach. In new ACO benchmarks identified this year, 37 percent of ACOs assess members for social determinants of health (SDOH). In support of that trend, the 2017 survey also found that one-third of responding ACOs include behavioral health providers.

Since that first accountable care foray by HHS, the number of ACO models has proliferated. The May 2017 HIN survey found that, of current ACO initiatives, the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) remains the front runner, with MSSP participation hovering near the same 66 percent level attained in HIN’s 2013 ACO snapshot.

Availability of chronic care management rose 14 percent from 2015 to 2017, according to new metrics from the Healthcare Intelligence Network.

The majority of chronic care management (CCM) outreach is conducted telephonically, say 88 percent of respondents to a 2017 Chronic Care Management survey by the Healthcare Intelligence Network (HIN), followed by face-to-face visits (65 percent) and home visits (44 percent).

This preference for telephonic CCM has remained unchanged since 2015, when HIN first canvassed healthcare executives on chronic care management practices. More than one hundred healthcare companies completed the 2017 CCM survey.

In addition, the April 2017 CCM survey captured a 14 percent increase in chronic care management programs over the two-year-span: from 55 percent in 2015 to 69 percent in 2017. Three-fourths of 2017 responding CCM programs target either Medicare beneficiaries or individuals with chronic comorbid conditions, with management of care transitions the top CCM component for 86 percent of programs.

In terms of reimbursement, payment levels for CCM services remained steady at 35 percent from 2015 to 2017. However, HIN’s second comprehensive CCM survey determined that 32 percent of respondents currently bill Medicare using CMS Chronic Care Management codes introduced in 2015.

This third comprehensive PHM assessment also determined that data analytics use in population health management continues to rise, though more slowly than it did from 2012 to 2014, when EHR and registry use tripled.

Additionally, the survey found that 70 percent of respondents have committed to population health management, up from 56 percent in 2012. At the same time, many lament payor reluctance to cover essential PHM services like health coaching and group visits they see as critical to PHM success.

Also paramount to PHM success under value-based healthcare reimbursement is strategic oversight of the ‘rising risk’ individuals with two or more unmanaged health conditions. One quarter of 2016 respondents focus PHM attention on their ‘rising risk’ populations, the April 2016 survey determined.

In recent years, population health management (PHM) has ranked as the healthcare space richest with opportunity, according to HIN’s annual industry trends snapshots.

A survey by the Healthcare Intelligence Network on the growing trend of fee-for-value payments has documented healthy adoption rates, measured savings and steady gains in the area of preventive services related to fee-for-value formulas.

Seventy-one percent of survey respondents employ a value-based reimbursement or alternative payment model, according to the October 2015 survey. The study also determined that of those respondents not yet exploring a fee-for-value approach, 26 percent plan to do so in the coming year.

Despite healthy adoption of alternative payment approaches, one quarter of respondents say the infrastructure required to sustain value-based payment models is the reimbursement trend’s most significant hurdlegreater even than the challenge of data integration or patient engagement, the survey determined.

In evaluating healthcare providers for value-based rewards, respondents most often review markers tied to quality (82 percent), hospital readmissions (56 percent) and patient satisfaction (56 percent) to determine payment, the survey found. The use of physician report cards to track provider performance was reported by 63 percent of respondents.

The shift toward fee-for-value has had the greatest impact on the area of prevention, respondents said, with 69 percent attributing a rise in preventive care to value-based reimbursement models.

Today's ACOs are larger, busier and better staffed than they were four years ago, according to a HIN year-over-year analysis.

Adoption of accountable care organizations (ACO) has more than tripled in four years and clinical integration continues to challenge non-adopters, according to a Healthcare Intelligence Network analysis of accountable care organization benchmarks from 2011 to 2015.

Leadership of ACOs by payor-provider co-ops or health plans has slowed to a trickle during this period, while the percentage of physician-hospital organization (PHOs) firmly grasping administration reins has nearly doubledfrom 15 percent in 2011 to 28 percent among 2015 respondents.

ACO Staffs Support Healthcare Integration

The ACO staff has become more diverse, boasting more specialists, health coaches and clinical psychologists to support integration of behavioral health and primary care, the ‘sweet spot’ of patient-centered medicine. Watchwords are care coordination and care management, according to 2015 respondents who shared ACO success stories.

Staffing within ACOs has swelled as well: 29 percent of 2015 survey respondents support 500-1,000 physicians within its ACO, nearly double the 17 percent reporting this staffing ratio in 2011.

The average ACO is also busier than ever, with 61 percent encompassing 10,000 covered lives or more, up from 42 percent in 2011, perhaps reflecting consolidation occurring across the healthcare landscape.

Today, healthcare organizations are more conservative about time required to adequately frame an ACO, with 20 percent of 2015 respondents reporting that two years or more was needed, up from 4 percent in 2011, while the percentage requiring 12 to 18 months for ACO creation dropped from 50 percent in 2011 to 37 percent this year.

Reimbursement Shifts from Volume- to Value-Based

The retrospective data supports the industry’s transition from the traditional fee for service payment environment to the value-based reimbursement structure favored today, with 45 percent of 2015 respondents favoring a FFS + care coordination + shared savings payment model, up from 15 percent in 2012. (Note: 2011 respondents were not surveyed on reimbursement models).

This handwriting is on CMS’s wall, in the form of its pledge to move half of Medicare payments into value-based payment models by 2018. More than half of 2015 respondents54 percentexpressed faith in the federal payor’s ability to meet this financial goal.

Despite the latest benchmarks, operational ACOs insist no two accountable care organizations are alike. In the experience of Steward Health Care Network, a top-performing Medicare Pioneer ACO, “When you’ve seen one ACO, you ‘ve really seen…one ACO.” Having ended Pioneer performance year two with gross savings of $19.2 million, Steward still must scale the perennial hurdles of physician engagement, performance improvement and care management, explained Kelly Clements, Steward’s Pioneer program director.

This year’s ACO survey benchmarks bear this out. Clinical integration, which can only succeed with the support of an engaged physician population, is still the biggest barrier to ACO formation, say 17 percent of 2015 survey respondents with no plans for accountable care.

mHealth is currently a $1.3 billion industry that is expected to reach $20 billion by 2018, according to a new infographic from Mobile Future and Infield Health.

This infographic shows savings attributed to remote patient monitoring and medication adherence resulting from mHealth. It also assesses how mobile tools are transforming healthcare as more Americans, including healthcare providers, adopt mobile devices and wireless connectivity, and more.

Learn more about mHealth in 2013 Healthcare Benchmarks: Mobile Health, which delivers a snapshot of mHealth trends, including current and planned mHealth initiatives, types and purpose of mHealth interventions, targeted populations and health conditions, and challenges, impact and results from mHealth efforts. This 50-page resource provides selected metrics on the use of mHealth for medication adherence, health coaching and population health management programs.

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Health coaching is a critical tool in population health management, helping to boost self-management of disease and reduce risk and associated cost across the health continuum. In its fourth Health Coaching e-survey, conducted in 2013, the Healthcare Intelligence Network captured the ways in which healthcare organizations implement health coaching as well as the financial and clinical outcomes that result from this health improvement strategy.

Drilling down to the hospital/health system perspective, this survey analyzed this sector’s health coaching program components, delivery methods, and more.

Conversely, this sector, which comprised 27 percent of survey respondents, is only a third as likely to address falls prevention (7 percent versus 19 percent overall) and much less likely to address medication adherence (33 percent versus 51 percent overall).

Coaching delivery methods differed for this sector as well. While no respondent in this sector reported the use of a smartphone app, responding hospitals/health systems were three times as likely as health coaching or disease management respondents to conduct group coaching sessions (53 percent of hospitals versus 14 percent of health coaching or disease management organizations), and significantly more likely to conduct face-to-face coaching (73 percent versus 59 percent overall).

Sixty-five percent of healthcare providers rely on internal staff networks as their main innovation resource, according to a new infographic from HIMSS and AVIA. The infographic also includes the top priorities of healthcare providers, top barriers to innovation, organizational return expectations and impacts, average innovation budgets and more.

You may also be interested in this related resource: Healthcare Innovation in Action: 19 Transformative Trends. Want to know more about healthcare innovations? This 40-page resource examines a set of pioneering efforts supporting the industry’s seismic shift from a volume-based culture to one rewarding value and patient-centeredness.

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Download this FREE report for data on the top clinical targets of healthcare case managers; the top means of identifying and stratifying individuals for case management; and the most common locations of embedded or colocated case managers.